In Fracking Democracy: A two-day spectacle carved into two-minute chunks found in the January/February 2011 issue of Orion magazine, Sandra Steingraber describes how high-volume slick water horizontal hydrofacturing blows up shale bedrock to get at a carbon-rich fossil fuel trapped inside. She compares fracking to mountaintop removal of Appalachian mountaintop. Fracking "blows it up."

"In the case of fracking, the quarry is methane bubbles trapped inside impermeable layers of shale thousands of feet below the earth's surface. To liberate the gas, millions of gallons of fresh water (high volume) are mixed with sand and chemicals -- some of which are carcinogens -- and this slippery mixture (slick water) is forced, under immense pressure, into mile-long tunnels drilled sideways (horizontal) through bedrock. With the assistance of explosives, this poisonous solution shatters the shale (hydro-fracturing) and releases a vaporous froth of petroleum, euphemistically known as natural gas, which floats up the borehole -- along with brine, radioactive materials, and heavy metals."

Sandra Steingraber tells us about the water that remains in the shale, removed from the water cycle. We will miss this water, consciously or unconsciously. We will miss the water. And we will miss the clean water we once had, and the clean air. We will miss those narrow roads through our state forests. We will miss more than we know.

As I ponder the strangeness of fracking once again, I look out the windows to the scene above. I am grateful that there is no fracking near me in Mechanicsburg, PA even as I am saddened that for many on the globe the environment they call home has been invaded by this extremely aggressive industry which takes from us all. Think: privatize profits, socialize costs.